Field
Radio access networks and particularly enhancements for diverse data applications may benefit from a self-adjusting discontinuous reception (DRX) pattern. Enhancements to DRX configuration/control mechanisms can be more responsive to the needs and activity of either single or multiple applications running in parallel, with improved adaptability to time-varying traffic profiles and to application requirements, thereby allowing for an improved optimization of the trade-off between performance and user equipment's battery consumption.
Description of the Related Art
Various discontinuous reception (DRX) operations exist with respect to the long term evolution (LTE) of the 3rd generation partnership project (3GPP). One example of a specification regarding discontinuous reception in LTE is technical specification (TS) 36.321. Various mechanisms include a sleep mode and other power saving mechanisms. For example, a base station may control the DRX adjustment by higher layer signaling between user equipment and network.
When traffic is bursty with varying amounts of data coming at long and possibly irregular intervals, it is difficult to configure the discontinuous reception optimally for a longer period of time using conventional discontinuous reception functionality.
A network may opt, therefore, to configure the on-duration and inactivity timer values quite long (for example, 50-200 ms) compared to average duration it takes to handle one short traffic burst. If the timers are set shorter, the conventional view is that the scheduling flexibility is reduced. Moreover, frequent reconfiguring the discontinuous reception of the user equipment to match the varying conditions causes signaling overhead, so networks conventionally configure a setting based on a worst case. This results in power consumption of the user equipment being high, decreasing the battery lifetime of the user equipment, or the signaling overhead being high and thus also reducing the network capacity available for data transmission.
However, there are no conventional enhancements to DRX configuration/control mechanisms to be more responsive to the needs and activity of either single or multiple applications running in parallel, with improved adaptability to time-varying traffic profiles and to application requirements, thereby allowing for an improved optimization of the trade-off between performance and battery consumption in user equipment.